You know what’s one of the absolute best things about Yu-Gi-Oh in my opinion?

Its protagonists are never asked to be violent.

The shonen genre is just drowning in these protagonists that fight all the time, for whatever reason.  Sure most of them are pure and good when you get down to it, but they will almost always take the fighting way first.

Yu-Gi-Oh protagonists are almost encouraged to be gentle.  They fight, but only because they have to.  Only because something or someone needs to be protected.  

Yugi’s whole character arc was about learning to be confident while keeping his kindness—Yami even says at the end that he had the greatest power of all, power that could surpass him, in the fact that he was kind. Gentle, loving, trusting, caring, believing in people and their potential to be friends.

Judai learned the hard way that violence was the wrong way to achieve things.  He had to learn how to be kind, truly kind, to not rely on his inner darkness but to seek gentleness instead.

Yusei was always gentle.  He never willingly chose the path of violence. He strove for equality and an end to discrimination and violence.  He wanted to find a way to save his friend without fighting but was unfortunately unable to achieve that.  But his entire being revolves around how everything is important in some way and thus nothing should be hurt or destroyed.

Yuma I think is the absolute best example of this.  He’s your ordinary shonen protagonist except he’s so damn trusting and believes so damn much that everyone around him is good.  His entire personality revolves around wanting to believe the best in people, about wanting to find common ground with people.  He tries to talk to people first, tries to make allies, tries to connect with and reach people, he trusts overwhelmingly and even when he is broken down and betrayed he chooses to keep trusting anyway.  He chooses not to hate or get revenge but to continue trusting in people, even though he’s been hurt so badly.  So many times he just begs for the fighting to stop. He doesn’t want to be a fighter.

And Yuya, Yuya is such a good example too.  He’s sensitive and tries to hide it with a smile.  He doesn’t want to hurt people—he wants to make people smile instead and he will try to make even his enemies smile.  He is the polar opposite of a fighter, a reluctant hero who is dragged to the forefront of combat when all he wants to do is help, not hurt.

Yu-Gi-Oh is amazing because it teaches boys that they can be gentle.  It teaches them that kindness is the greatest power you can have, and that you should try to make allies with people, that even if you are hurt you can still believe in humanity, that befriending will always be better than fighting.  That it’s not naïve or stupid to be kind and trusting and caring.  How many boy-oriented shows do that?  I mean really.

I just love Yu-Gi-Oh so goddamn much don’t touch me